“Clearly, it is disturbing. It’s embarrassing. It’s frightening. Conduct unbecoming of a chief magistrate,” said Councillor James Pasternak, a centrist. “It’s gutter language and very sad.”

“I’m outraged,” said left-leaning Councillor Maria Augimeri, who watched the video in the waiting room of her doctor’s office, where it was playing on the TV monitors. “I don’t think he ever should have been the mayor. I don’t think he ever had the capacity to be the mayor.”

He offered little explanation, beyond admitting that he was “extremely, extremely inebriated.”

“I hope none of you have, or will ever, be in that state,” he said.

Left-leaning Councillor Shelley Carroll said she and her fellow councillors “are all sort of sickened” by the footage, which “really makes your stomach do flip-flops.”

“This is a mayor who engages in outrageous behaviours and seems to think that no matter who’s in the room his behaviour should be and is entirely without consequence. It has consequences for the city, for his family, and for him,” Carroll said.

She described the mayor’s behaviour in the video as the stuff of legend, which goes beyond any display she has ever observed on the floor of council.

“We’ve seen him change colour; we’ve seen him jump up in the council chamber and go in the back and heard yelling; we’ve heard glimpses of that. That behaviour is some sort of legend – and I’d never actually seen it,” she said.

Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly, who has been urging Ford to take a pause, said the video is “another weight now that’s been placed on the mayor’s shoulders.”

But Kelly said he is not shocked by the display.

“I’ve lived long enough that I’ve seen people in private act in a way that is totally different from the way they act in public and I think most people, either with their friends, or their family.”

Kelly also called attention to the up-tilted angle of the video, which he said suggests the mayor was unaware of the presence of the camera, and has “been set up.”

“Who’s setting him up and why?” Kelly asked.

Although Ford’s core group of supporters on council have so far unable to convince him to take a leave, left-leaning Councillor Joe Mihevc said the video “furthers the case that he needs to take a time-out and even resign from his post.”

“Those closest to him need to use the appropriate combination of supports and pressures to get him to do the right thing, which it’s becoming ever more clear, is to leave office,” Mihevc said. “They have to come out behind the scenes and get him to do it with consequences if he doesn’t.”

In light of the totality of recent revelations about the mayor’s behaviour, Councillor John Filion, a leftist, said the video is not “a game changer.”

“I think we already know the mayor has some substance abuses issues and this is more evidence of that,” he said.